Biotechnology timeline

History of Biotechnology

Early cultures also understood the importance of using natural processes to breakdown waste products into inert forms. From very early nomadic tribes to pre-urban civilizations it was common knowledge that given enough time organic waste products would be absorbed and eventually integrated into the soil. It was not until the advent of modern microbiology and chemistry that this process was fully understood and attributed to bacteria.

The most practical use of biotechnology, which is still present today, is the cultivations of plants to produce food suitable to humans. Agriculture has been theorized to have become the dominant way of producing food since the Neolithic Revolution. The processes and methods of agriculture have been refined by other mechanical and biological sciences since its inception. Through early biotechnology farmers were able to select the best suited and high-yield crops to produce enough food to support a growing population. Other uses of biotechnology were required as crops and fields became increasingly large and difficult to maintain. Specific organisms and organism byproducts were used to fertilize, restore nitrogen, and control pests. Throughout the use of agriculture farmers have inadvertently altered the genetics of their crops through introducing them to new environments, breeding them with other plants, and by using artificial selection. In modern times some plants are genetically modified to produce specific nutritional values or to be economical.

The process of Ethanol fermentation was also one of the first forms of biotechnology. Cultures such as those in Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Iran developed the process of brewing which consisted of combining malted grains with specifics yeasts to produce alcoholic beverages. In this process the carbohydrates in the grains were broken down into alcohols such as ethanol. Later other cultures produced the process of Lactic acid fermentation which allowed the fermentation and preservation of other forms of food. Fermentation was also used in this time period to produce leavened bread. Although the process of fermentation was not fully understood until Louis Pasteur’s work in 1857, it is still the first use of biotechnology to convert a food source into another form.

Combinations of plants and other organisms were used as medications in many early civilizations. Since as early as 200 BC people began to use disabled or minute amounts of infectious agents to immunize themselves against infections. These and similar processes have been refined in modern medicine and have lead to many developments such as antibiotics, vaccines, and other methods of fighting sickness.

A more recent field in biotechnology is that of genetic engineering. Genetic modification has opened up many new fields of biotechnology and allowed the modification of plants, animals, and even humans on a molecular level.

Biotechnology timeline

• 8000 BC Collecting of seeds for replanting. Evidence that Mesopotamian people used selective breeding (artificial selection) practices to improve livestock.
• 6000 BC Brewing beer, fermenting wine, baking bread with help of yeast
• 4000 BC Chinese made yogurt and cheese with lactic-acid-producing bacteria
• 1500 AD Plant collecting around the world
• 1590 AD The microscope is invented by Zacharias Janssen.
• 1675 AD Microorganisms discovered (using first microscope)
• 1856 AD Gregor Mendel discovered the laws of inheritance
• 1919 AD Karl Ereky, a Hungarian agricultural engineer, first used the word biotechnology
• 1953 AD James D. Watson, Maurice Wilkins, Rosalind Franklin, and Francis Crick describe the structure of DNA
• 1975 AD Method for producing monoclonal antibody developed by Kohler and Milstein
• 1980 AD Modern biotech is characterized by recombinant DNA technology. The prokaryote model, E. coli, is used to produce insulin and other medicine, in human form. (About 5% of diabetics are allergic to animal insulins available before)
• 1994 AD FDA approves of the first GM food from Calgene: "Flavr Savr" tomato
• 1997 AD British scientists from the Roslin Institute report cloning a sheep called Dolly using DNA from two adult sheep cells. Keith Campbell has now been given 66% of the credit for cloning Dolly the Sheep. Ian Wilmut's role in cloning Dolly the Sheep is disputed and remains in doubt.
• 2000 AD Completion of a "rough draft" of the genome in Human Genome Project
• 2002 AD Researchers sequence the DNA of rice, the main food source for two-thirds of the world's population. Rice is the first crop to have its genome decoded.
• 2003 AD Fifty years after the description of the structure of DNA, the human genoma project is finalized (April 14).

History of Bioengineering

The application of engineering knowledge to the fields of medicine and biology. The bioengineer must be well grounded in biology and have engineering knowledge that is broad, drawing upon electrical, chemical, mechanical, and other engineering disciplines. The bioengineer may work in any of a large range of areas. One of these is the provision of artificial means to assist defective body functions—such as hearing aids, artificial limbs, and supportive or substitute organs. In another direction, the bioengineer may use engineering methods to achieve biosynthesis of animal or plant products—such as for fermentation processes.

Before World War II the field of bioengineering was essentially unknown and little communication or interaction existed between the engineer and the life scientist. A few exceptions, however, should be noted. The agricultural engineer and the chemical engineer, involved in fermentation processes, have always been bioengineers in the broadest sense of the definition since they deal with biological systems and work with biologists. The civil engineer, specializing in sanitation, has applied biological principles in the work. Mechanical engineers have worked with the medical profession for many years in the development of artificial limbs. Another area of mechanical engineering that falls in the field of bioengineering is the air-conditioning field. In the early 1920s engineers and physiologists were employed by the American Society of Heating and Ventilating Engineers to study the effects of temperature and humidity on humans and to provide design criteria for heating and air-conditioning systems.

Today there are many more examples of interaction between biology and engineering, particularly in the medical and life-support fields. In addition to an increased awareness of the need for communication between the engineer and the associate in the life sciences, there is an increasing recognition of the role the engineer can play in several of the biological fields, including human medicine, and, likewise, an awareness of the contributions biological science can make toward the solution of engineering problems.

Much of the increase in bioengineering activity can be credited to electrical engineers. In the 1950s bioengineering meetings were dominated by sessions devoted to medical electronics. Medical instrumentation and medical electronics continue to be major areas of interest, but biological modeling, blood-flow dynamics, prosthetics, biomechanics (dynamics of body motion and strength of materials), biological heat transfer, biomaterials, and other areas are now included in conference programs.

Bioengineering developed out of specific desires or needs: the desire of surgeons to bypass the heart, the need for replacement organs, the requirement for life support in space, and many more. In most cases the early interaction and education were a result of personal contacts between physician, or physiologist, and engineer. Communication between the engineer and the life scientist was immediately recognized as a problem. Most engineers who wandered into the field in its early days probably had an exposure to biology through a high-school course and no further work. To overcome this problem, engineers began to study not only the subject matter but also the methods and techniques of their counterparts in medicine, physiology, psychology, and biology. Much of the information was self-taught or obtained through personal association and discussions. Finally, recognizing a need to assist in overcoming the communication barrier as well as to prepare engineers for the future, engineering schools developed courses and curricula in bioengineering.

Branches of bioengineering:

1. Medical engineering. Medical engineering concerns the application of engineering principles to medical problems, including the replacement of damaged organs, instrumentation, and the systems of health care, including diagnostic applications of computers.

2. Agricultural engineering. This includes the application of engineering principles to the problems of biological production and to the external operations and environment that influence this production.

3. Bionics. Bionics is the study of living systems so that the knowledge gained can be applied to the design of physical systems.

4. Biochemical engineering. Biochemical engineering includes fermentation engineering, application of engineering principles to microscopic biological systems that are used to create new products by synthesis, including the production of protein from suitable raw materials.

5. Human-factors engineering. This concerns the application of engineering, physiology, and psychology to the optimization of the human–machine relationship.

Environmental health engineering. Also called bioenvironmental engineering, this field concerns the application of engineering principles to the control of the environment for the health, comfort, and safety of human beings. It includes the field of life-support systems for the

exploration of outer space and the ocean.

Дата добавления: 2015-10-28